Islamic Front

Last week Islam moved nearer the united front it has not enjoyed since the 13th Century, when the leader of the new Pan-Arab movement, Saudi Arabia's tall, wise, Mohammedan Warrior-King Ibn Saud, patched up his diplomatic and religious quarrels with the Government of Mohammedan Egypt.

Egypt is to Islam about what the U. S. is to Catholic Rome--an outland which provides large sums of money but gets modest recognition from the high church hierarchy. Until 1926 an annual train of Egyptian Mohammedan pilgrims made its way to Mecca, bringing gifts of money, grain and a newly woven black brocade carpet to cover Mecca's sacred, silver-incrusted Black Stone, a meteorite supposed to have fallen in Adam's time. To protect the Egyptian pilgrims from Ibn Saud's marauding Wahabi warriors went each year a company of Egyptian soldiers and a military band. In 1926 King Ibn Saud objected to the troops. His ascetic Wahabis said they objected to the whole caravan and especially the band. The Wahabis attacked the pilgrim caravan, killed an Egyptian officer.

Thereafter Egypt's King Fuad refused to recognize the new Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, stopped the grain and money gifts to Mecca. The valuable Egyptian pilgrim traffic to Mecca fell off sharply. Last month, just before King Fuad died, King Ibn Saud maneuvered Egypt's then Premier Aly Maher Pasha into new negotiations between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. From his deathbed Fuad, also anxious to patch the quarrel since he still hoped to be named Caliph of all Islam,* fostered the secret negotiations.

Last week, with Fuad's body new in its grave, Egypt agreed to recognize the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Ibn Saud guaranteed the safety of the annual Egyptian pilgrimage to Mecca. Economically, each country will enjoy a "most-favored-nation" status with the other.

*A title which was abolished by Kamal Atatuerk in 1924.

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